my journey from gluttonous to glorious

Okay, okay so you might be saying “Uhhhh, that ginger looks a lot more like apples than ginger.” And you are right… well, sorta. Technically, I made Apple Ginger Tea but I just threw the apples in because my kids didn’t eat the other half of the Fuji apple I cut for them. It works with or without apple slices!

The main reason I wanted to make my ginger tea in the crockpot was because I kept having to babysit it on the stovetop, I had several boil-overs on accident, and I was losing all of the water because it kept reducing! So, I figured, give it a go in the crock pot! It keeps all the water in there, and I can even leave while it “cooks”. It worked out great! I’m trying to have a cup of ginger tea every day for a month to see if it helps with the inflammation in my hip.

Ginger Tea In The Crockpot

4 cups/1 Liter water, heated to boiling

2 “knobs” of ginger (see the pic below)

optional 1/2 Fuji apple, sliced with peels ON

optional 1-2 teaspoons honey, to taste

optional 1-2 teaspoons lime juice, to taste

Instructions

While you work, heat water to boiling.

Peel the ginger and then “peel-shred” it into the crock pot. (I just use the vegetable peeler and make thin slices of the ginger to get more bang for my buck.)

Add in the apples if you want and then pour in the boiling water.

Cook on HIGH for 3-4 hours.

Pour through a sieve (or, like me, just ladel it into your teavana tea maker to strain it) and then add in honey and lime juice.

Okay, since I could never figure out in recipes what a “knob” of ginger was supposed to be (is it just part of it or the whole thing?) I decided to take a picture of the ginger I used next to a quarter so that you could see exactly what I used. Use more for a stronger tea if you’d like!

I had gotten to the point where I’d had to come face to face with the fact that I was using honey in the same way that I used to use sugar. I was using it…

when I needed an emotional boost.
when I was tired.
when I felt like my energy was low.
when my lunch was less than satisfactory.
when my hot tea was “inedible” without it.
when my oatmeal, peanut-butter, raisin granola bar in a bowl wasn’t nearly as yummy without it.

And I was just choosing to “look the other way” when it came down to it. I was talking to my dad about it one day and I asked him if he was eating honey (he’s cutting down on his sugar, too) and he said “No, I mean… it’s basically just sugar.”

I wanted to balk at his answer. I wanted to give him all of my excuses “No, it’s better than sugar.” “No, it’s okay to have a little honey if you cut out refined sugar.” “No, it won’t lead me toward being overweight or getting diabetes.”

But I didn’t say anything back other than “Yeah, that’s true.”

Cause it is true. He was right. It IS basically just sugar. And although I can see why people say that it is “healthier” for me than sugar, when it boils down to it… I was eating it for wrong reasons. I wanted that sugary, sweet taste… which is not bad in and of itself, but I wanted it all. the. time.

So, I had to Just Say No to honey.

Haha… that’s kind of funny isn’t it? Had to “just say no” to… HONEY?

But I knew that it was creeping in as a stronghold and I thought it best to nip it in the bud. I didn’t do that last year with bread and I allowed bread to become my go-to. my addiction. my comfort. my “need”. But I am learning more and more and then again and again that if something is “tripping me up”… sugar, bread, facebook, meat, working on the sabbath, and now, honey… that it’s gotta go. I don’t want anything holding me back. I’d much rather “sacrifice” some luxuries in my life and life a life of fulfillment than keep those things.

Note: I wrote the above part of this post back in late January and, needless to say, aside from never getting around to publishing it, I also never got around to “quitting” honey. I definitely cut down on it, but I was still going to it for a “fix”.

Well, a couple of days ago we were out of honey and I wanted to make some granola bars for my son’s lunches, so I picked some up when I went to the store. Good ol gluttonous me grabbed the biggest one. Then I thought, “Well, I don’t want it to get all crystallized and wasted since I don’t eat as much of it anymore.” So, I went to replace the jumbo one and get the medium sized and that’s when I noticed the price!

Holy Honey, Batman!!! $13.59?!?!?!

Well, that pretty much solidified the no-honey initiative in my life! It figures out to 34¢ an ounce which doesn’t seem like a lot but I know that we’d blow through those 40 ounces in a month. And I do know that $13.59 is a lot to spend on a luxury once a month.

That’s gas money.
That’s ten shirts from the thrift store for my son who definitely needs a few more.
That’s a lot of loaves of bread for lunches.
That’s three or four visits to Starbucks (which I’d much rather have than honey)!

So, my soul might be on a diet from honey but, now, so is my WALLET! Ha!

Soooooo, I feel sorta like I should apologize for publicly sharing my pity party the other night.

And part of me feels like it is just what I should have published.

I guess I feel sorry because I was being negative and, seriously, who really needs negativity these days? And the part of me that is like “No, it was right” thinks that because I was being honest and real… and sometimes we just need to know that someone else is feeling that way as well.

But, I’m happy to report that “weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Psalm 30:5

Cause I woke up this morning and everything was… okay. Not amazing, but okay. I mean, after all, I still had the same muffin top that I’d had the night before, but there was just renewed perspective and hope this morning.

I went to church and that really sent me on the right path… it was so nice just to be around people who care so little about my muffin top and to have the whole morning be about how much God loves us in any state that we are in.

Then I came home, got my boys to nap and “room time” and… wait for it… I took a nap myself. I was exhausted from being up all night having my pity party and then having to finish up my lesson for this morning. And… well, I’ve been really exploring the concept of honoring the sabbath. Ya know, it’s like… a commandment and all. I just recently wrote this post about it on a blog that I guest post for.

And can I just say that as I write this (on Sunday evening) that the weather is actually nice enough for us to be outside, and my two sons are playing NICELY with each other on the slide… it’s kind of idyllic. I mean… what is a muffin top when compared to this? I’m just feeling extremely content and definitely refocused today.

There is definitely some learning that came out of my pity party last night though:

It has been a while since I have been royally depressed like that about my weight/size. I attribute this a lot to having tossed the scale on Day 118 a long time ago… one of the best decisions that I have made during this whole experience.

It also may have been the little kick in the emotional rear-end for me to get rid of a couple more strongholds: e.g. honey. I think I’ll write about honey later, because it’s a tricky little guy, but anyway… honey is on the outsies with me right now.

I can be a little teensy weensy over dramatic sometimes. Cause, honestly, I went in this afternoon and tried on my trade-show pants (which I hadn’t tried on since Day 363 right after I stopped eating bread for the year) and they fit pretty dern good. No, they weren’t exactly the same as they were in June but I had relatively no muffin top. But I sent myself on this tear last night about my pants not fitting when it wasn’t even the case!!!

But all in all, I am reminded even now about a verse that has been coming to mind a lot… such a simple verse. a verse that most of us have heard a gazillion times and so oftentimes we sorta zone it out and nod our heads like good Christians. But, let’s take a moment to pay a smidge more attention to it today…

Nice, isn’t it? Being told to just be still. Being told to stop worrying. Being told that Someone Else has it all under control?

I can be still because God will help me work through any issues with my weight.
I can be still because God will help me work through any issues with eating honey.
I can be still because God will help me work through any issues with overdramatics.

It’s 4:45am and I’ve been up for about an hour with a cough. My husband, toddler, and I all have it. Not sure how the five-year old skipped it, although if Murphy’s Law proves true, he’ll get it just in time for school! Ha!

Anyway, I’ve had this cough for about a week now. Most days it’s just been annoying but yesterday and through the night I have actually felt sick. I went to bed, well, on time last night… but when my boy woke up at 3:30 I could not go back to sleep because of this tickle-itch in the back of my throat. Of course, I came out of the bedroom and am now lounging on the couch hoping that sleep will find me again.

I should have known I’d get sick once I started a fast… poor ol’ Satan. He needs a new bag of tricks… doesn’t he know that he’s already done this to me… twice?!?!

Anyway, one of the big things on this hard-core Daniel Fast is that I decided not to drink anything other than water. But yesterday, I literally was at my wits end with this cough. Meds weren’t working. Cough drops were having zero effect. My husband suggested that I have a cup of hot tea. I was on the verge of giving in and just having a cup of hot tea in the mindset that it was medicinal, but then he suggested that I have some hot lemon water with honey. My reaction was one of disgust, even though I knew that it would help me, and so then when I thought about my options, I was like “well… a cup of hot tea would be nice and it wouldn’t be much of obedience to Him, but a cup of lemon water… ewwwwwww. Yes, even with honey… ewwwwww… it’ll be like a sacrificial obedience.” So I figured that it was safe to view the lemon water as medicinal instead of a cup of tea.

And wow, did it help.

And wow, was I glad that I avoided the tea and went with more of a sacrifice… went with obedience.

And it wasn’t like a legalism kind of thing… I really wanted to please God by not giving in easily to something that would break my fast agreement with Him. It kind of reminds me of this conversation:

What is more pleasing to the Lord: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Listen! Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of rams.1 Samuel 15:22

And in a way, I felt like it was obedience… trying to obey Him. That is what pleased Him. And that is my goal.

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Okay, well, I can definitely say at this point that I have lost weight. And I guess I might as well admit it: I weighed myself the other day. I mean, I knew that I had lost two pants sizes and my curiosity got the best of me. And well… I have lost 25 pounds!

I know, right?

The last time I lost 25 pounds was in college… in 1998.

170 had always been my “If I weight 170 then I will do whatever it takes to lose weight”. Little did I know a day would come when I would rejoice at getting down to weighing 170. But I got to 170 my freshman year of college, came home that summer and did the Atkins diet. I also worked as an intern for my church youth group which… well, leaves relatively no time to even think about eating. Those two things together (oh, and my first serious boyfriend broke up with me the first day of summer, so I was determined to get “hot” and get him back) worked to get me down to 150. Add to that going back to college to an ex-boyfriend that still didn’t want me, and I got down to 140.

Then I kept most of it off until I met my husband in 2002 and it slowly crept up to about 190 our first year of marriage. And I never was able to shed that. Occasionally, I’d drop down into the 180s… one time getting all the way down to 180 only to promptly gain it all back within a few months (plus an extra 10 for good measure). So, this January I found myself hovering around 180-190.

And ya know what is said… I can track my entire life through my weight… and it’s like I have said before that weight is a scary thing because I can so easily allow it to define me. And I subsequently give each of those weights a level of “happiness”:

140 = ecstatically happy

155 = meh, life’s okay

170 = something’s wrong with me

190 = I’m a loser

205 = I’m worthless

Truth be told, I was no happier or unhappy at 140 than I was at 205. I was the same person inside… and I was just as obsessed with food at 205 as I was at 140… if not more so at 140. Because having to avoid food in regular circumstances causes just as much obsession as it does when you can eat whatever you want.

But now, I am not the same person. Not the same person that I was at 140… not the same person that I was at 205. I’m not the same person not because of my physical body change but because of the change inside of me. Because I have rediscovered (or perhaps really truly discovered for the first time) an obsession entirely separate from food. And He is far more fulfilling than any piece of chocolate.

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Meet Me

Hey there, friend, my name is January! Almost two years ago, realizing I was addicted to food (mainly sugar) I made a covenant with God to only eat certain foods and I'm blogging my way through it!

I'd love for you to join me on this journey as we seek God to help us through addiction to food, gluttony, overeating... whatever you want to call it. I truly believe that through covenanting with God that we can be free of this weight that brings us down, and we can move from gluttonous to glorious!